Labrada was among thousands of Cuban-Americans flying to the island this week to celebrate the new year. These types of annual pilgrimages would have been sharply curtailed if two South Florida, GOP Cuban-American congressmen had succeeded in returning to the Bush-era limit of once every three years. The measure backed by U.S. Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart and David Rivera was tucked into the congressional spending bill, but Republican leaders jettisoned it last week as part of a last minute compromise.
Labrada said Monday she didn’t appreciate the effort to restore the old restriction.
“I think it was very disappointing, because the least we can do is help our own families,’’ she said. “We should go and take advantage of the opportunity to bring them things and help any way we can.’’
President Barack Obama allowed unlimited family visits by Cuban-Americans shortly after taking office and removed the $1,200 annual cap on remittances. Exact numbers are difficult to come by, but the Cuban government said earlier this year it expected about 500,000 U.S. visitors annually, the vast majority of them Cuban-Americans. Cuban officials did not immediately respond to requests for corresponding statistics from past years, but they have previously said there were nearly 300,000 visits from Cubans living outside the island in 2009. It was not immediately clear whether that included repeat travelers.
Many Cuban-Americans, like Labrada have already been traveling to Cuba for years. They just had to go through special church trips or through a third country to get around the three year ban.
Of nearly a dozen families interviewed at the Miami Airport, all but two said they’d last visited the island in the last year or two.
“I don’t think it should be any different for us than it is for anyone else going to visit family in any other country,’’ Labrada said.
Except it is different.
